2016 SFB Authors

Below is the list of authors scheduled to appear at this year's Southern Festival of Books. This list is sorted alphabetically and then is broken into multiple pages. If you would like a one-page version of this list (in order to print the entire list, for example), please click here.

is the award-winning author of eight novels, including The Fever and Dare Me. She received her PhD in English and American literature from New York University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian. Megan is currently a staff writer on HBO's forthcoming David Simon show, The Deuce. She lives in New York City.

author of Your Screenplay Sucks! 100 Ways To Make It Great, is a Writers Guild Lifetime Member who's had three feature films produced from his screenplays. He's written for studios, independent producers, and major television networks. Akers gives writing workshops around the world and is a regular speaker at Story Expo in Los Angeles.

is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Catma. He received the Robert Penn Warren Prize in Poetry from the Southern Review in 2007 and a Special Mention for fiction in Pushcart Prize XXXVII. He was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in 2014. A longtime resident of upstate South Carolina, Allen is the Bennette E. Geer Professor of Literature Emeritus at Furman University. The Final Days of Great American Shopping is his first book of prose fiction.

Current Book:
The Final Days of Great American Shopping: Stories Past, Present and Future

is a multiple Dove Award-winning lyricist, the author of two novels and two nonfiction books. She is a graduate of the University of Alabama and Southern New Hampshire University. After twenty-six years of living in Nashville and working in the music business, she moved with her husband, Dennis, to Cleveland, Georgia, where she teaches English and Creative Writing at Truett-McConnell College.

has worked in the public history/museum field for around twenty years. His past experience includes curating, public speaking, and creating documentaries. Brian holds a degree from Austin Peay State University in American history. He has also worked as a staff historian for several local museums and served as curator for Traveller's Rest Plantation. Brian is co-author of Tennessee State Penitentiary.

is an award-winning author and journalist who has worked at papers across the Southern United States, from Los Angeles to Orlando. As a reporter and editor, she covered everything from murders and refinery explosions on the police beat, to national political campaigns. She was part of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams at the Los Angeles Times. She lives on a farm in upstate New York. Thanksgiving is based on a short story that won a gold medal in the Faulkner Wisdom competition.

lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife and son. He is the critically-acclaimed author or Mosquitoland, which has been translated into over a dozen languages. Previous jobs include freelance musician/producer, stay-at-home dad, and preschool teacher. He is a fierce believer in the power of kindness and community. And pesto. He believes fiercely in pesto.

teaches at Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee. Her previous collection of poems, What Travels with Us, won the Poetry Book of the Year Award from the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance and the Appalachian Studies Association's Weatherford Award.